The Mistaken Critic, or a Discourse on the Word (1-5)

That you did not know the word nefandous is surely clear to everyone. When I had said of you that you were like a nefandous day—for I well remember comparing your character to a day of that kind[*]— how could you, with reference to that word, have made the stricture that I was barbarous in my speech, unless you were wholly unacquainted withit? I shall teach you presently what nefandous means; but I say to you now what Archilochus once said: “You have caught a cicada by the wing.”[*] Have you ever heard of a writer of iambic verses named Archilochus, a Parian by birth, a man absolutely independent and given to frankness, who did not hesitate at all to use insulting language, no matter how much pain he was

going to inflict upon those who would be exposed to the gall of his iambics? Well, when he was abused by someone of that type, he said that the man had caught a cicada by the wing, likening himself, Archilochus, to the cicada, which by nature is vociferous, even without any compulsion, but when it is caught by the wing, cries out still more lustily. “Unlucky man,” said he, “what is your idea in provoking against yourself a vociferous poet, in search of motives and themes for his iambics?”[*]

In these same terms I threaten you, not likening myself to Archilochus (how could I? I am far indeed from that!), but aware that you have done in your life hundreds of things which deserve iambics. Even Archilochus himself, I think, would not have been able to cope with them, though he invited both Simonides[*] and Hipponax to take a hand with him in treating just one of your bad traits, so childish in every sort of iniquity have you made Orodocides and Lycambes and Bupalus,[*] their butts, appear. Probably it was one of the gods who brought the smile to your lips on that occasion at my use of the word nefandous, in order that you might become more notorious than a Scythian for being absolutely uneducated and ignorant of these obvious matters of common knowledge, and that you might afford a reasonable excuse for attacking you to an independent

man who knows you thoroughly from home and will not refrain from telling—I should say, heralding abroad—all that you do by night and by day even now, in addition to those many incidents of your past.

And yet it is idle, no doubt, and superfluous to deal frankly with you by way of education; for in the first place you yourself could never improve in response to my censure, any more than a tumble-bug could be persuaded not to roll those balls of his any longer, when once he has become used to them.[*] In the second place, I do not believe that anyone exists who still is ignorant of your brazen performances and of the sins that you, an old man, have committed against yourself. You are not to that extent secure or unobserved in your iniquity. There is no need of anyone to strip away your lion’s skin that you may be revealed a donkey, unless perhaps someone has just come to us from the Hyperboreans, or is sufficiently Cymaean[*] not to know, as soon as he sees you, that you are the most unbridled of all asses, without waiting to hear you bray. Your doings have been noised abroad so long a time, so far ahead of me, so universally and so repeatedly; and you have no slight reputation for them, surpassing Ariphrades, surpassing the Sybarite Hemitheon, surpassing the notorious Chian, Bastas, that adept in similar matters.[*]

Nevertheless, I must speak of them, even if I shall

seem to be telling stale news, in order that I may not bear the blame of being the only one who does not know about them. But no!

We must callin one of Menander’s Prologues, Exposure, a god devoted to Truth and Frankness, by no means the least notable of the characters that appear on the stage, disliked only by you and your sort, who fear his tongue because he knows everything and tells in plain language all that he knows about you.[*] It would indeed be delightful if he should prove willing to oblige us by coming forward and telling the spectators the entire argument of the play.

Come then, Exposure, best of prologues and divinities, take care to inform the audience plainly that we have not resorted to this public utterance gratuitously, or in a quarrelsome spirit, or, as the proverb has it, with unwashen feet,[*] but to vindicate a grievance of our own as well as those of the public, hating the man for his depravity. Say only this, and present a clear exposition, and then, giving us your blessing, take yourself off, and leave the rest to us, for we shall copy you and expose the greater part of his career so thoroughly that in point of truth and frankness you can find no fault with us. But do not sing my praises to them, Exposure dear, and do not prematurely pour out the bald truth about these traits of his; for it is not fitting, as you are a god, that the words which describe matters so abominable should come upon your lips.

“This self-styled sophist” (Prologue is now speaking) “once came to Olympia, purposing to deliver

to those who should attend the festival a speech which he had written long before. The subject of his composition was the exclusion of Pythagoras (by one of the Athenians, I suppose) from participation in the Eleusinian mysteries as a barbarian, because Pythagoras himself was in the habit of saying that before being Pythagoras he had once been Euphorbus.[*] In truth, his speech was after the pattern of Aesop’s jackdaw, cobbled up out of motley feathers from others. Wanting, of course, to have it thought that he was not repeating a stale composition but making up offhand what really came from his book, he requested one of his familiars (it was the one from Patras, who has so much business in the courts) to select Pythagoras for him when he asked for subjects to talk about. The man did so, and prevailed upon the audience to hear that speech about Pythagoras.